Internal reporting channels

The channels of denunciation serve to vehicular, within the same public institutions, the alert before acts or conducts that can suppose a breach of the preventive tools of the conflicts of interest of the public servants. These channels, also called whistleblowing, are aimed at providing "a safe alternative to silence" for both public servants and citizens who, in good faith, want to communicate possible situations of conflicts of interest or acts of alleged corruption.

The ex officio action of the existing oversight bodies (internal or external) will not always be sufficient to be aware of the situations mentioned, especially in the most serious cases. From a prudent pragmatism, we must recognize that sometimes we must have the knowledge that only certain people inside or initiated have the facts that determine the conflict of interest.

Unlike existing communication mechanisms or complaints addressed to the competent bodies, internal complaint channels add guarantees of confidentiality and protection to the person who communicates the facts, and favor the disclosure of situations that, otherwise, they would remain hidden, many times for fear of reprisals. These communications may constitute justified alerts and must trigger the protection and investigation mechanisms of the information disclosed.

In any case, public institutions should not perceive in the performance of these alerters an act of disloyalty; on the contrary, it is a loyal behavior that gives them the opportunity to know the deficiencies of internal functioning and act accordingly to correct them. In this sense, the more established the complaint channels are and the more guarantees of protection they offer, the less likely it will be that the good faith alerters will transfer the information to the media or in public opinion in general. In these situations, public institutions will not have had the opportunity to manage and correct the aforementioned irregularities to the detriment of public trust and other concurrent legitimate rights or interests.